The painterly aspect of the video was created in collaboration with an artist named Alexa Meade, who uses paint on both canvas and the human body to create a trompe l‘oeil style that makes you wonder if the painting is truly alive or not. (Trompe l’oeil is French for “deceive the eye,” and it’s been a device of artists for centuries.) However, according to BuzzFeed News, who spoke with Alexa about her work on the video, one particular painter was a huge muse for the video.

“The song is about female empowerment, so a big inspiration was Georgia O'Keeffe," Alexa told BuzzFeed. "Her flowers were so suggestive, and the idea was to create Ariana in the middle of a giant Georgia O'Keeffe painting." O’Keeffe was an American artist revered for her paintings of flowers, which often looked vaginal or sexual. According to Alexa, Ariana’s O’Keeffe of choice for her video was “Grey Lines with Blue, Black, and Yellow,” a painting from 1923.

Alexa’s collaboration with Ariana and her team had another plot twist as well; the artist had only two weeks to prepare for the shoot, and Ariana decided she didn’t want her entire body painted, just a few sections as you see in the video. “It was an incredible stroke of genius and artistic insight, and I need to give credit to Ariana for that one,” Alexa said in conversation with BuzzFeed. It took about 40 minutes to paint her body, and then she was submerged in a tub full of a “vegan milk alternative” as to not destroy the paint.

Alexa has posted lots of beautiful behind-the-scenes images on Instagram, and she calls the end result “epically beautiful.” We’d have to agree with you there, Alexa — and we have a feeling you may have helped start a gorgeous new visual trend for music videos, makeup looks, and even Instagram photo shoots.